Sentient Thrive (Thrive Space Colony Adventures)

by Ginger Booth

  The conveyor belt stopped. Red emergency lights came on. And a wheeled robot sped around a bend to douse them with foam flame retardant.

  Ben battled his way out of his foam cocoon to see Remi doing the same. The red lights vanished, leaving the place pitch dark again, except where their helmets glowed yellow through their packaging. Other conveyor belts had resumed, though theirs remained halted.

  “It’s oxygen,” the engineer confidently claimed. He used an arm to excavate his toolbox, then batted clear a section of the conveyor to use as a table. Eventually they found the right air-filling tool in Ben’s box, not his. By then a horde of spider-bots descended to clean up the mess. They retreated to an open section of floor-wall and cast a bubble around themselves and their gear.

  “No sparks,” Remi warned.

  “No kidding.”

  Painstakingly, Remi filled a canister. It was slightly over-pressure on oxygen, but not enough to cause problems. Fortunately, the way their suits worked, nitrogen was recycled into the bottle, but carbon dioxide filtered into the suit’s waste stream. Ben’s ship standard required a full flush and refill. But a shot of oxygen was all they really needed to recharge one.

  “I’ll test it,” Ben volunteered.

  “No. You are the captain.” Remi unhooked his current can and tried to replace it himself.

  Ben grabbed the canister and snapped it home for less than a second, then unplugged it. “Was it good?”

  “I cannot tell. Give it longer.”

  The captain plugged the canister back and left it for a slow count of one-regolith, two-regolith, three-regolith, disconnect. He watched Remi’s face the whole time like a dedicated sensor. “Well?”

  Remi nodded slowly, then broke into a grin. “We live!” He threw his arms around Ben. He clunked his helmet to each cheek, a French kiss, pressure-suit fashion.

  Ben laughed out loud, drunk on success, and returned the gestures. “Thank you, Remi!” He plugged the man’s new canister back in. “Next!”

  His companion looked sheepish. “I, ah, didn’t mean…anything.”

  Ben grimaced. “I never thought you did. You like women, I like men. But I don’t screw with crew. Tikki I knew before we hired him. You remember. You were there when I met him.” He lined up the other canisters for recharging.

  “Are you and Cope…?” Remi began. “Never mind. None of my business.”

  “We have time to bond,” Ben quipped. “Are Cope and I what?”

  “Are you more lovers? Or friends? I don’t mean anything bad. But you take lovers. I wonder if you are not happy at home, in all ways.”

  Not perfectly, no. Ben didn’t care to air marital laundry, though. “We were separated for a long time. I developed some bad habits, is all. Now mostly we’re together. If I can have him, I don’t want anyone else. And the affairs, they were all like that. So yes, we’re best friends. But also lovers. We don’t look it? We try to behave in public.”

  “You seemed eager to leave him. That’s all.” Remi attended to his refilling job.

  Eventually an answer coalesced, and Ben replied. “He worked really hard to take care of me. And I was completely out of line.” He explained about the nanites getting fried on Denali, causing his meltdown. And how he’d then refused to get them replaced right away. “I…there’s business stuff in the way between us.”

  “Ah.”

  “You’re being tactful,” Ben accused. “What.”

  “I don’t know how to say it. You treat Cope as your superior.”

  “Cope is my superior. In every way.”

  “I don’t think so. You are equals. Sometimes he excels, sometimes you. Or one will fail, or both. You are great men. When you fall, you fall hard. But always you try to be smaller than Cope. To hide in his shadow. But this is not equal. I think you resent him. A little.”

  The captain froze, until Remi leaned over to pull the next canister from him. Then he whispered, “I resent him. Especially about the kids. Especially as president. He didn’t take care of the money. I did.” He gulped. “It wasn’t just nanites.”

  “No,” Remi agreed. “Your breakdown, it took months. I was not surprised. And I worry now, captain. If this…adventure is too much for you. We come here for an easy assignment, for you to recover. Tell me if you need help. We survive together. Or not.”

  “Am I screwing up?” Ben demanded.

  “No.”

  “I can handle it!”

  “You have so far,” Remi murmured placatingly. “But you are scared. I know this because I am scared. We are not stupid.”

  We could die here, oh so easily. “Yeah.” Ben stood too abruptly. He floated up to the bubble wall above, which gently batted him back down. “But our next move is back to the shuttle. Then a good meal on Merchant. Agreed?”

  Remi wobbled his head. “The cart, she needs recharging. Extra oxygen would be nice. But we have no nozzles.”

  “Three spare cans. And we marked the way back. We’ll go faster now. I’ll check the cart.” He bubbled himself out of Remi’s enclosure, then lay to look inside the control box of their purloined robo-ride. This involved zero-g levitation, not contact with the stone ‘floor’ of the moment. Only his boots and gauntlets were insulated enough for prolonged contact with surfaces near absolute zero. Actually lying down would drain his heater battery and invite hypothermia.

  He easily located the cart battery and tested its charge. At a guess, it was well below a quarter capacity, and so was his suit. Remi’s was even lower. He grabbed their spare batteries and tested them as well. Discharged.

  “Remi, recharging is a priority. Our spare batteries are no good. They discharged from the cold.”

  “Merde. I’m low.”

  “Looks like a 240-volt AC plug. I’ll go look.”

  “No! We stay together. I am done in two minutes.”

  Ben watched the spider-bots work on the conveyor. The belt shuddered back to life before Remi sliced his way out of the bubble. Cope would loathe the robots. They’d put factory engineers out of a job on Mahina.

  “Not here I think,” Remi advised, studying their nanofab environs. “Spider or bat den. They recharge.”

  And off they went on the next life support challenge. The engineer had only 20 minutes of heat left.

  24

  As the cart came to a halt, Ben stared at the five-way intersection. Of all the corridors they’d traversed in this damned rock, not once had he encountered a five-way.

  Recharging their batteries had proven neither quick nor straightforward. The cart was simple, but Remi needed to fashion a custom adapter to step down from 240 volts to charge their power packs, which took 110 volts in. Hanging out in the bat cave amongst the rustling robots was creepy as hell. He still couldn’t figure out what the ‘wings’ were for, in a vacuum – certainly not flying.

  But now their suits were recharged, spare power bricks wrapped to hold their heat and slow their discharge. Resupply accomplished, finally they resumed their path toward the shuttle. And they reached this five-way.

  Remi quipped, “Ben, I begin to doubt your reputation as the best pilot in Aloha.” He laughed. “We mark these corridors, and map them. And still you get lost?” He started the cart in the opposite direction, to backtrack to the previous intersection.

  After a couple doorways, Ben demanded, “No, stop. Go back.”

  Remi sighed and did as asked. Upon arrival, Ben vaulted out of the cart and scrutinized the tunnel walls at the five-way. There. He placed his hand on an arrow tip, etched on their current corridor to point the direction from whence they arrived. Z for Zap. The arrow shaft ended abruptly under masonry. “We’ve been here.”

  “And you mapped it wrong?” Remi wondered.

  “Everyone makes mistakes,” the captain growled.

  But did he make one here? Not one of the ubiquitous four-way crossroads, this was a junction they visited and mapped multiple times. Ben slid the wall and found the ore smelter marking. So according to his record
s, their tunnel toward the shuttle was…that blank wall. Unless he’d gotten turned around, which he surely had.

  But that wouldn’t explain five tunnels where once there were six. He couldn’t have made that mistake. Not that many times.

  He floated into mid-intersection and set to spinning at dead slow, altering his axis of rotation a few times. In his long experience, he’d found no good words to describe the direction sense of a space pilot, the continual realignment of reference axes. What he did now was akin to spinning a combination lock to clear previous botched attempts, an orientation reset to his internal tumblers. He closed his eyes and sensed the spin until he felt all preferences dissolve. Then he opened his eyes and pictured a man etching the wall by Remi. Ignoring him and the cart, he deployed his grav generator to follow his feet, using his body as a plumb line. He drifted like a Denali leaf to the ‘floor’, to stand canted 30 degrees.

  He pointed backward to his left, certain. “The tunnel is there.”

  He carefully followed his arm to shine his headlamp at a blank wall.

  “Maybe you need rest.”

  “I am not losing it,” Ben insisted. He carefully kept his arm pointing where his missing tunnel should be, but swept his helmet light to the closest nearby tunnel. Then he walked the light back, ever so slowly.

  “Stop!” Remi called out. “The wall. There, it is different.” His headlamp reinforced Ben’s in the region he spotted.

  Ben considered dropping his orientation arm, but decided against it. “You look.”

  The engineer launched toward the discrepancy in the tunnel color. With his headlamp up close and personal, the discontinuity became clearer. Using the end of a screwdriver, he started tapping.

  Sound didn’t carry in vacuum. Ben left him to his tactile divination from faint vibrations traveling up a screwdriver. Instead the captain systematically cast his own head-lamp, attempting to trace the outline of this different wall. Yes, it was essentially circular. “New construction. The robots blocked us. Am I wrong?”

  “No. You are right.” Remi attempted to chip at the new wall with his screwdriver. This dislodged a chunk of composite smaller than a tooth filling, to Ben’s eye.

  But apparently the engineer wasn’t trying to dig their way out. He carried his chip to the cart, to study it with his high-power magnifier. “Concrete. These tunnel walls, they are lined with concrete. This is new.”

  “How do you mix concrete in vacuum?”

  “You don’t. But it dries very fast in vacuum, yes?”

  Ben snuffed a laugh. “Yes. Damn.” He dropped his arm and stepped to his missing tunnel. He pulled out his yellow tube and marked the new wall B for Blocked. “Have we ever seen a tunnel loop? A bypass?” He didn’t recall any, except possibly in a new construction zone. But two of these now-five tunnels they skipped precisely because they presumably led to new construction near the smelter.

  “No. We could blow up the wall.”

  Ben shot him a look. “With what? Suborn more robots?” He wore a blaster, but for defense against robots. It wasn’t much use for excavation. He completed his etching and rejoined the cart. “Possibilities. Attack the wall. Bypass the plug by testing all adjacent tunnels. Find a way to the surface.” He gazed uneasily at the missing tunnel mouth. But why would Loki block our way out?

  Or is it Loki who directs these robots? He didn’t share his thoughts aloud because they struck him as paranoid. But we told Loki we were here. He knows by now. Doesn’t he?

  “The ore smelter,” Remi reasoned. “Its dross. Follow the waste rock to the surface. Maybe.”

  Ben had a sinking feeling that wouldn’t work. Not if someone was actively working to block them. But why would Loki do that? “Yes. That tunnel to the smelter. No. Let’s explore the left one we skipped before. I think that’s up.” He hopped out and marked the chosen corridor on wall and map.

  Remi started the cart trundling along again, and reached to offer Ben a hand up as he passed. “Six hours of air.”

  “We know our way back to the air store, and the recharging bay,” Ben reminded him. So long as no one builds another wall. They were hungry and tired. But their water recycled. “How long on the suits? Four days for a skiff miner, right? But our suits are in better repair.”

  “I doubt that,” Remi contradicted him. “We visit space. A miner, his suit is his life. Yes, four days, maybe five with safety margin. Our suits, four.”

  The prospect of being trapped in a maze for four days invited Ben to despair. He told his rego fears to take a hike. We go on. “We find our way outside from the smelter. In four hours, we return to the nanofab.”

  “Aye, captain.”

  Ben silently resolved that for those four hours, they should not advertise their position to Loki again.

  “Stop him!” Ben wheeled to see what Remi was pointing at, blaster drawn on automatic. He cursed and put a hand down to cancel his inevitable spinning momentum.

  After a full day of enjoying a nearly empty asteroid, their luck ran out on this corridor. They’d found their way back to the smelter room. The chamber ahead was packed, robots of every shape and description busily demolishing stone. But they’d left the spacers alone.

  Until now. His headlamp converged with Remi’s on a polebot making for their parked cart. As they’d hoped, they found a rock rubbish dumpster, steadily filling. The two men camped waiting for it to move so they could trail it to the surface. But they parked the cart back a few dozen meters to stay out of the spew zone from the jackhammer-bots. To protect themselves, they filched shields from the bots, rather shorter and squatter than themselves, to huddle behind.

  Ben steadied and took careful aim, and blew the polebot’s head off. He paused to assess. Sure enough, the bot kept going. So he expended another charge to blow out its wheel base, and topple it to the gravel-heap of slithering ‘floor.’

  It really bothered him that every side of this chamber acted as floor. He kept looking up, waiting for those gravel piles ‘above’ to land on his head. The cart sat canted about 50 degrees off their current orientation, chosen to match the base of the dumpster.

  “Think we should move the cart farther away?” the captain asked.

  Remi turned back to assess the dumpster, his headlamp tracking automatically. “I think they must move the container soon. Gravel masses one point five tons per cubic meter. Over a hundred tons.” He reconsidered his wording. “It’s full.”

  Turning his head 180 degrees to check the dumpster didn’t tempt Ben. Instead he assessed the activity level in the room. Sure enough, the robot agenda had altered. He figured they were cleaning up, so a replacement monster dumpster could move in.

  He was about to mention this theory, when two polebots split off and headed toward his cart. “Dammit!” He blew the base off both of them in turn.

  The group-mind, whatever that might be, dispatched four replacements.

  Ben grimaced, and checked the charge on his blaster. “Geometric progression.” He worried his lip with his teeth, and sighed hugely. “Retrieve our gear. Bring the shields.” With that, he enabled his grav again for traction and sprinted for the cart. The engineer understandably lagged behind.

  Arriving at the cart, Ben kicked a polebot over to get him out of the way, and vaulted into the cart. He swore at the need to keep his helmet tucked down to put light on his subject, as he scraped together their awkward collection of belongings. He hurled out the broken sled, which gave another polebot an occupation. The other two now made slow progress hauling him and the cart toward the dumpster. And four more polebots rolled toward him to replace the two he’d distracted.

  He grimaced at their broken cases. Better to use them than risk leaving a precious air canister or battery loose to be tidied into the trash by a bot. He filled the bottom halves of them. But the cart was getting perilously close to the dumpster.

  “Ben! The control board!” Remi yelled at him.

  Ben blinked. “Bring it? Or use it?”

  �
��Both!” Remi clambered in, shoving two rock-shields into him, much like the riot shields used by the Schuyler police. Ben sprawled onto his ass as the cart suddenly jerked into motion away from the waiting maw of the dumpster.

  Which of course inspired the polebots to redouble their efforts. “We’re bailing out, Remi! They won’t give up!”

  “Merde!” The engineer draped himself over the side, butt to Ben again, to salvage the far end of his control electronics.

  Ben sourly collected the belongings he’d spilled all over again. “If they tip you into that dumpster, I won’t come get you.”

  “Screw you, too.”

  “Bail out, chief! That’s an order! I need to hand this out to you, or we’ll lose it!”

  “Oh.” Remi yanked his wiring, and stood to coil it neatly around his control board.

  Ben ripped both out of his hands and shoved them into a broken case. “Out!” He kicked a polebot out of the way to make Remi an opening, then shoved him in that direction. The moment the engineer dismounted, Ben shoved a case at him, then perched the working sled on top of it. He hauled the second case to the side, then slipped overboard halfway, grabbed the case, and dropped to the gravel.

  Much lighter, the cart took only seconds to complete its trip into the dumpster.

  But the polebots decided the men were also debris to be policed from the work zone. Two seized Ben by his shoulders and bore him after the cart.

  “Do not lose the cases!” Ben hollered. He tried kicking the polebots away. But as others had found before him, the damned things were strong. He knew how to disable them, either with a blaster or by pulling the bolt that served as a shoulder hinge. But with his arms desperately clutching the warped case closed, he couldn’t let go to do either.

  They lifted him and flipped him onto the dross heap. He tucked protectively around his box and rolled hard on his back. A rocked stabbed into the back of his thigh, and the suit automatically applied a tourniquet. “Dammit!” A wildly careening beam of headlamp advertised Remi arriving seconds before a sled handlebar rammed into Ben’s kidney. “Ow!”